Re: Dropping old fdisk utilities
On 09/22/2017 01:16 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
The main problem is that mac-fdisk is not a package that is built on any
of Debian's release architectures. This normally means you cannot upload
a package through the regular FTP mechanism as the Debian Archive Kit
(DAK) will kick any package source which does not produce binary
packages on release architectures.
That problem would affect bootloaders and other platform-specific packages
for unofficial ports, right?
It does. It can be worked around by uploading those packages to "unreleased"
which works, but it's not as nice and clean as going through the official
channels.
That's another reason why I would like to replace Yaboot with GRUB on powerpc
and ppc64 and SILO with GRUB on sparc64.
The problem was that mac-fdisk still ships udebs for debian-installer
although these are no longer used as debian-installer always uses parted
for partitioning hard disks during installation these days. Yet, any
udebs available for a given architecture are pulled in during
installation and can therefore cause issues.
So, mac-fdisk broke debian-installer even though it's not even needed by
d-i anymore. And that is one of the typical effects you see with
software that has been unmaintained for a long time.
I agree that d-i is more important than mac-fdisk, but AFAICS we aren't
yet in a position where we have to choose between them.
Well, I have started creating debian-installer images for the various
ports architectures, so there is always the risk that mac-fdisk interferes
with debian-installer.
If we cannot agree on removing mac-fdisk altogether, I will at least
drop the udeb so there is no risk of interference with d-i in the
future anymore. We can't use the udeb anymore anyways.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
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